Burger King launches ‘WhopperCoin’ – Yes.. it’s real!

Burger King in Russia have launched a cryptocurrency as a reward scheme for people who make regular Whopper purchases. For each rouble (around $0.02) they spend on a Whopper Sandwich, the customer would be rewarded with a WhopperCoin token that they would be able to save up in a mobile wallet and eventually purchase burgers with.

Burger King have had a presence in Russia since 2010

The coins have been launched – and will be managed – on the Waves Platform, with the company running a blockchain ledger to keep track of user’s coins. In a statement the company said that 1 billion Whoppercoins have already been created, and a Whopper burger can be redeemed for 1,700 Whoppercoins. They also stated that, “as a blockchain token, Whoppercoin can be freely transferred and traded online – meaning that customers can save their rewards, send them to friends and sell them to new buyers”.

Why Burger King decided to only offer this reward towards Whopper purchases is not yet clear. Perhaps – if successful – they will expand it to both other countries and other products. The whopper is undoubtedly their biggest seller, so it’s understandable that they have started with that product.

Nevertheless, this is a gamechanger for loyalty rewards. Using Blockchain technology for loyalty rewards makes it much easier for consumers to collect, and spend coins. It also makes it nigh on impossible for people to fake or counterfeit coins, as only the organisation has a copy of the ledger that stores who owns what. How the general public will react to using a cryptocurrency will be interesting to see, as the majority of people are still wary of entering this ever changing realm!

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